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“What’s Up With Science?” We recently had a march for science — ok, most of us are in favor of science, but it looked like that was really a march to support political correctness and to protect big funding for labs that do — who knows what? “Science” has become a buzz word for one’s favorite politics. Let’s look into …

One of the precipitating causes of the war in Syria (no pun intended) was the increasing scarcity of water in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin as a result of climate change and the deliberate policies of weaponization of water supplies by Turkey and its neighbour states. Drought has had a firm grip on the region since 1998 and the recent dry spell …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is moving towards allowing trade with Iran, Russia and China to be conducted in local rather than foreign currencies, as he continues his efforts to strengthen the falling lira. “If we buy something from them, we will use their money, if they buy something from us, they will use our currency,” he …

We are on the brink of seeing three of the world’s richest democracies be led by women. This is a moment to take stock, to measure how attitudes have changed to women in power, and what that means for the licence that they now have to define themselves. It is always harder on the way to power: Clinton’s battles with …

Russia Finds – Shaming The U.S. Government Into Action Can Work Russia has now managed twice to shame the U.S. into action against Jihadis by publicly demonstrating that the U.S. is not really committed to its promises. During 2014 and 2015 the U.S. did very little to attack the Islamic State. U.S. strikes hit irrelevant targets likean “ISIS excavator” or some …

Tehran — Public relations firms with no qualms about taking tainted petrodollars are experiencing a bonanza. Their latest project has been to persuade us that the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, is no more. As a Nusra spokesman toldCNN, the rebranded rebel group, supposedly separated from its parent terrorist organization, has become “moderate.” Thus is fanaticism from the Dark Ages …

Beirut (AFP) – More than 300,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since March 2011, a monitor said in a new toll Tuesday, the first full day of an internationally-brokered truce. More than 86,000 civilians were among the 301,781 people killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The civilian toll includes 15,099 children and 10,018 women, the …

The borders of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” are shrinking fast. The group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria are collapsing one by one. The U.S.-led war has reached a point where questions are being raised about what comes next. So far, the answer seems likely to be: more war. That’s partly because the U.S. strategy for defeating the Islamic State relies …